The atomic nature of notes within a zettelkasten provides a thinking advantage in that it: - systematically remembers the ideas you've had before so that you can free up cognitive space for the future, never worrying about that great idea you "once had" but now can't get back - encourages you to get down enough context that your future self will understand what you were writing and what you meant and not much more - it encourages the "just good enough" which helps suppress the need to get something perfect. For those who are perfectionists, it helps them lock in something and then move onto the next thing more efficiently without getting bogged down into the mud. - give you something as a future base from which to add additional material and ideas or alternately a base from which you can edit, rewrite, or hone the idea further

OTR: suggested by mrtnj at https://discord.com/channels/992400632390615070/992400632776507447/1274393371984662691

Relatable

Spagnoli, Paola, Carmela Buono, Liliya Scafuri Kovalchuk, Gennaro Cordasco, and Anna Esposito. ‘Perfectionism and Burnout During the COVID-19 Crisis: A Two-Wave Cross-Lagged Study’. Frontiers in Psychology 11 (2021). https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2020.631994.

Yep, success is addicting...which then probably makes finishing projects easier, because of course...you want that high again.

But what if you haven't had that first taste of success yet? What if, as a result of having not experienced the joy it brings you and those you've helped, you then become uber-perfectionistic, causing you to obsess over every little detail in your project? That right there is (for me) why my projects don't get finished. I want my material to help people so badly that I, ironically, wind up injuring my confidence and momentum.

If I broke down writing projects into even more sub-projects, one of those would be editing. It's what throws me for a curve most of the time. I'll write something great, begin editing it, then a brilliant new take on a point comes to mind out of nowhere, something so great you can't just let it go. You have to build it into the piece. But, when you try to cram it in there, other parts of the material begin to fall apart. Pretty soon you've written a brand new article; an article that—yup—needs to be edited. And you can't promise yourself the same flash of brilliance won't strike again.